After looking through some of the comments and seeing several dislikes for my reason for not including more people, I decided to choose 9 participants for the hand registration contest. With my participation, that will mean there are 10 people in total participating in this contest.

I used Random.org to select the participants more fairly, and they are listed below. I will send each participant an email to let them know about their selection and advise them of the rules later on today.

The ten participants are:

Me

Rich

Rahul Chaudhary

Kevin Davis

Doron

Alan Shiflett

Ammar Kubba

Aaron Strong

Konstantinos Zournas

Gabe Quash

There is no prize for this contest, but it will probably provide some level of validation of the winner’s ability to choose and hand register good domain names. Once the registration period has ended, each participant will email me his list, and I will make sure the rules were followed. I will then post the 10 lists without the participants’ names, and you guys can vote for the best list.

Here are the rules:

Only 10 names may be submitted

All names must be newly hand registered between December 23, 2013 – December 29, 2013 (US / domain registry timezone – ie Whois creation date must be within that time period)

No pending deletes permitted

All names must be registered under privacy so people can’t see who registered each list

Participants must pay for their own domain name purchases and privacy

Participants can’t encourage people to vote for their list or mention which list is theirs

Voting will take place with a PollDaddy poll shortly after I have verified the names

If there’s some funkiness with the PollDaddy poll (ie someone “stuffing the box”) I may use an alternate voting tool.

I reserve the right to make changes to the rules before the contest in the event someone brings up a good point about a flaw.

As I mentioned in the initial post, since I am participating, there is no tangible prize of value.

About The Author: Elliot Silver is an Internet entrepreneur and publisher of DomainInvesting.com. Elliot is also the founder and President of Top Notch Domains, LLC, a company that has sold seven figures worth of domain names in the last five years. Please read the DomainInvesting.com Terms of Use page for additional information about the publisher, website comment policy, disclosures, and conflicts of interest.

This thread needs more trash talking. Ammar Kubba can’t register a hand reg .biz to save his life. The guy who works for godaddy best not front-run. .. . oh zing yea i said it. whatcha got . Aaron Strong. yea more like Aaron WEAK. (always wanted to lay that back on someone). I’m sure Elliot has this one in the bag though. He’s been saving up to buy all the honey boo boo and Phil Robertson typos. Go Team Elliot !

“The registry sets this status after a domain has been set in REDEMPTIONPERIOD status and the domain has not been restored by the registrar. The domain will not be included in the zone. Once in this status all registrar requests to modify or otherwise update the domain will be rejected. The domain will be purged from the registry database after being in this status for 5 calendar days.”

I don’t think it would be fair for someone to win a pending delete auction (like Mouthwash.com and PetSitters.com which were both pending delete auctions) or or exclusive drop house purchase and then use them in this contest.

The domain name doesn’t have to be totally new and never registered, but it shouldn’t come from pending delete status.

The spirit of the contest is to find 10 names sitting unregistered during the time period and purchase them, with readers deciding who bought the best list.

One reason for no reward of financial value, aside from my participation, is that there is a bit of a grey area in the rules, and I hope participants stick to the spirit of the contest

Advertise

Important Notice: Unless explicitly stated, Top Notch Domains, LLC does not endorse any advertiser on this website. Advertisements and links may take visitors to external websites. Top Notch Domains, LLC is not responsible or liable for products, services, or content found on any other website. See the DomainInvesting.com disclaimer for additional details and information as well as this website's Terms of Use.